Good God! How much longer are we going to hear about the ADDY Awards? Oh, excuse me, I mean the American Advertising Awards. I thought the Cannes Lions lead-up was overkill, but the AAF has been milking this one for months. I guess that can be blamed on its three-tiered local, regional and national approach to things. Anyway, Publicis Seattle announced today that it was awarded five national ADDY Awards at the AAF's American Advertising Awards Competition. The annual award show and gala took place on May 31 in Boca Raton, Fla. Publicis Seattle came out on top with four …

Grey is not an ad agency. Say what? Yes, it's true. At least according to Papa John's VP of Global Digital Marketing Jim Ensign. If you weren't at OMMA Mobile during Internet Week, you might not have heard Ensign say: "We just hired a new agency. And we don't call them an ad agency -- they're a content agency." The pizza chain recently chose Grey as its agency and Ensign says: "We refer to them as a content agency, and that was the important part of the review." So if you want an ad agency, don't call Grey. But if …

Are you ready? Cannes is less than two weeks away. And as always, the industry is dripping with anticipation. And there are the usual lead-ups that bring even more to the festival. First, there's Decoded, which is out with Decoded Oracle -- a process that will use machine learning to analyze data from the last ten years of Cannes Lions, combined with present insights from social media, to predict the Cannes Lions winners. The predicted results, along with stats and analysis leading up to the award announcements, can be found here. The winners will be announced on June 17th. And …

Oh, please. Does anyone who has worked in an ad agency for more than two seconds find any inspiration from these ham-handed, buzzword-laden, pointlessly prolific manifestos that are seemingly aimed at corralling the awesomeness of creativity which supposedly resides within the agency? If you've seen/read one, you've seen them all. Well, here's another one -- this time from DDB, which thinks it has the answer. It's influence. It makes us grow. It makes us proud. It makes us free. And it's the freedom from chaos. And fear. And DDB is happy to provide this the world over at the "intersection" …

Well, you can't win them all, Maurice -- but you can win the Diversity Pioneer Award from the American Advertising Federation. At the annual Diversity Achievement Mosaic Awards ceremony, Maurice Levy, chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe, was honored with the Diversity Pioneer award, the highest distinction given at this occasion. Launched in 2001 by the American Advertising Federation and the Mosaic Center, an integrated sector of the AAF, the Mosaic Awards mission is to promote diversity in the communications industry by valorizing the efforts and achievements in multicultural marketing. If you can't win in the M&A game, you might …

Hmm. Was Austin-based GSD&M not cool enough to have been chosen by Chipotle to handle the chain's branding and original programming (think Farmed and Dangerous) efforts? Apparently not. But it would seem they are cool enough to handle the brand's traditional advertising efforts (think ads and media) as they were just awarded that component of the brand's account. Of choosing GSD&M, Chipotle CMO Mark Crumpacker said: "Our approach to marketing relies on an integrated effort between our internal creative group and a select team of specialized agencies. We have a well-developed vision for our brand, but we are always looking …

And here we go. KiDS Creative has signed a 15-year lease for 34,775 square feet on the 87th floor of One World Trade Center. KiDS will pay somewhere north of $90 per square foot, and it's the first lease One World Trade Center has inked in 3 years. The full-floor space at One World Trade Center is expected to house both KiDS and the photography and film departments of Box Studios. Of the deal, One World Trade Center Director of Leasing Eric Engelhardt said: "KiDS and One World Trade Center make a perfect match. KiDS is destined to a bright …

According to Business Insider, New York-Based Huge is the slowest social media agency on the planet. That is, unless there's another agency out there that takes 45 days to send a tweet. Yes, you read that right. Forty-five days. Business Insider's intrepid reporter Aaron Taube "got a look inside" the New York offices of Huge and learned how the agency took 45 days to craft and post a tweet for the client President Cheese. Now, to be fair to Huge, all of this was born out of the fact that what Taube wrote about was not the creation of a …

Lowe Campbell Ewald staffers will return to work today with big smiles. After handling the Navy recruiting account since 2000 and re-winning it in 2009, the agency has been handed an $85 million (annually) short-term contract extension to tide things over until later this year when a mandated agency review will take place. The winner will take over the account in January 2015. An RFP is out and calls for proposals by May 30. No word on who is participating. Of their work with the account and what's on the horizon, Lowe Campbell Ewald CEO Jim Palmer said: "In our …

Fred & Farid explain what really went wrong with the Publicis Omnicom Merger. And ADC is out with Portfolio Cards that are designed to help young creatives get attention for their work. Also, former Havas Worldwide New York Chief Digital Officer Alex Bombeck has landed at Sparks Grove, while changes are afoot at O&M UK. And sadly, Lexington, KY ad shop Meridian-Chiles has gone belly up.